11.13.08
Posted in Mac, Linux at 3:12 pm by Michael
Ran into a problem today with mounting a dmg file from mac os on my linux machine. Apparently some dmg files are compressed so you can’t just mount it normally. You need a utilty called dmg2img which will decompress the dmg file and allow you to mount it normally on the loopback.
You can get dmg2img here.
You’ll have to compile and install it, then you can run it like this:
dmg2img -i filename.dmg -o filename.out.dmg
Then you’ll be able to mount it normally on the loopback like this:
mount -t hfsplus -o loop /path/to/filename.out.dmg /path/to/mountpoint
Hopefully this will help someone who has the same issue I did with mounting a compressed dmg file from Mac OS X
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07.09.07
Posted in Mac, Parallels Desktop, Ubuntu at 5:32 am by Michael
I had some major issues again using the Server Edition of Ubuntu 7.04 to install a new virtual machine in Parallels 3. Ubuntu Server seems to have some things enabled in the server kernel that Parallels just doesn’t like. I also ran into a problem trying to use more than 512 megs of ram for the virtual machine. Hopefully this gets sorted out in the next update to Parallels, since I prefer to use 768 megs of ram for my virtual machine.
I used the latest version of the Ubuntu Server iso to install. I am assuming anyone using this install method is at least at an intermediate level of using Linux, so I’m not going to hold your hand too much. I am using Parallels 3 build 4128, and have done this install successfully 5 times now. I configure the virtual machine to use 5 gigs of hdd space, and 512 megs of ram. I run through the server install as normal, choosing the “install to hard drive” option at boot. The screens are pretty easy to handle, the hardest part is partitioning the drive, and you can just choose the “guided” option for that if you aren’t as picky as I am. As a note anything over 3 gigs of space should work for a virtual machine, I happen to use 5 gigs so I have some room to play with. I have a linux server that I can connect to over the network if I need more space than that.
Once the install finishes it will prompt you to reboot. Allow it to reboot but press the stop button on the virtual machine once it starts to load grub. Then go to Edit->Virtual Machine on the Parallels menu. On the virtual machine configuration editor, choose Options on the left, then click the “Booting” tab on the right. Look for the “Boot Sequence” section and select “CD-ROM, Hard Disk, Floppy” so it will boot from the iso again. This is important because you want the virtual machine to boot from the cdrom so you can get a shell and install the generic kernel instead of the server kernel. After you’ve changed the boot sequence setting, click “OK” and then boot the virtual machine with the green play button.
At this point parallels should boot the cd again. Choose “Rescue a broken system” from the menu and hit Enter. It should boot into rescue mode, it will ask you a couple of questions, similar to the install process. If you’re in the US and using english, you can pretty much just press enter at every prompt, until it asks about disks. On a guided or typical ubuntu install under Parallels the root filesystem should be /dev/sda1. Choose that one, and hit Enter. On the next screen select “Execute a shell in /dev/sda1″
Once you are at a shell, verify you have network by sending a ping to google or yahoo. You can’t do these next steps without your network working, since we’ll be using the network to update and install packages. We start with an update and upgrade, to get all the newest versions of installed packages.
aptitude update && aptitude -y upgrade
After this is complete, you want to install the generic kernel.
aptitude -y install linux-generic linux-image-generic
If everything goes smoothly and you have a decent internet connection, this process should take less than 20 minutes. After that, simply remove the packages for the server kernel.
dpkg -l | grep linux-image
This will show you the exact version of the server image you have installed. Use it in the next command for the last package if your version isn’t the same as mine.
aptitude remove linux-server linux-image-server
aptitude remove linux-image-2.6.20-15-server
Assuming you didn’t run into any problems, type “exit” to return to the rescue menu. Choose the reboot option, then stop the virutal machine with the red stop button. Go back to Edit->Virtual Machine on the Parallels menu, select “Options” on the left, then the “Booting” tab on the right. Change the boot sequence back to “Hard Disk, CD-ROM, Floppy”
Boot the Virtual Machine and it should get you to the login prompt. After you are logged in, install whatever software you would normally on your server setup.
A note, if you are using an actual cd instead of just having Parallels connect to an iso you downloaded to your mac, it may be necessary to choose Solaris 10 as your operating system for the initial install and “fix” phase. There have been reports of the cd emulation not working otherwise. Simply set your OS Type to Solaris, and the OS Version to Solaris 10 when you first configure the virtual machine. Use the process outlined as above, and once you are ready to boot the system, edit the virtual machine configuration again. Set your OS Type to Linux, and the OS Version to Ubuntu Linux.
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06.22.07
Posted in Mac at 6:12 pm by Michael
I will clarify a few things that have been asked in comments on digg and consumerist. My macbook was only 6 months old when it stopped working. I was still within the normal 1 year manufacturer’s warranty. I only mention in the video that I had purchased applecare to illustrate how much money I had spent in this situation. Before I destroyed the macbook, I removed the screen, the battery, the hdd, and the ram. The screen’s connector was damaged by me during removal. The rest of the parts were sold prior to the video being made, to help pay for my new laptop.
The situation has turned into a flamefest. At first I was defensive, as I think many people would be when they get called a retard, or stupid, or an idiot, or a tool, or whatever else has been said. I got over that, now I just think they are funny. Thanks for making me laugh.
Reading the comments, there have been many people who have spilled things on their Apple products and had them replaced. My point, made with a sledgehammer is this: Why did my product not get replaced while theirs did? At the very least Apple is selective about enforcing their policies, and that’s something people should know about them. At worst, Apple gives bad service to customers, which should also be known. What made these other people so “special” that Apple relaxed for them the same policy they used to deny my claim? Every story of someone actually spilling something and getting a replacement just upsets me more. I spilled nothing, yet my claim was denied by this selectively enforced policy. Was my money any different than these other customers? What about my situation was different? There was no spill damage that I could see, but even if there had been a spill I didn’t know about, why wouldn’t they simply replace it, as they had done for other people such damage?
I was well on my way to becoming a very vocal Apple fan when this happened. I planned to upgrade to a macbook pro at the end of this year. I was seriously considering getting an Apple TV, and I would have eventually bought an Apple iPhone. If Apple hadn’t refused to warranty the product, I would be an Apple Fanboy right now. After seeing the name-calling responses I got from the Apple fans in comments, I’m glad I didn’t end up that way.
My handling of the situation was not ideal, but it was personally satisfying. I gained closure on the issue at the end of that video. Things got stirred up for me again once the video shot up in popularity. Thankfully I’m now back to where I was at the end of the video, content.
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06.21.07
Posted in Mac at 4:33 pm by Michael
Wow. That was a huge amount of traffic both to the youtube video and my blog in a short time. Thankfully I had the cache in place and the site held up very well. Anyone that hasn’t seen it, here are the links:
Man Teaches Apple To Not Repair His Macbook By Smashing It With Sledgehammer on digg.com
Man Teaches Apple To Not Repair His Macbook By Smashing It With Sledgehammer on consumerist.com
I’m actually impressed my server handled this as well as it did, though consumerist took the brunt of the traffic I got quite a bit of spillover here.
Now to address the comments. Apple fans seem to like to make personal attacks whenever anyone tries to say anything bad about Apple. That’s fine, though I expected a bit more maturity from that group, the internet is the internet and semi-anonymity encourages people to be douchebags. I will steer clear from Apple fans in the future though, I kept feeling I needed to defend myself from completely made up claims, but I got over that. Now I’m just enjoying all the sniping and back-and-forth action in the comments on both sites. Hell I even dugg up some of the funnier comments just for spite.
To clear up something that is being asked over and over again, I took the HDD, the ram, and the battery out of my macbook and sold them before the video was made. It seemed overly wasteful to destroy perfectly good parts. I screwed up the screen trying to remove it, or else I would have probably been able to sell it as well. I still have the screen, the connector to the mainboard is broken though.
I felt like I had to justify myself at first, mainly because everyone was calling me a liar, but I got over that pretty quick. I have nothing to prove to anyone, and the video stands on it’s own merit. It was fun to do and the controversy is amusing me to no end…
I haven’t felt the virtualization subject stirring me up lately, so I’m going to be adding several more categories to my blog after this, just so I have things to post about. I feel I should spend more time posting fresh content than I have been, and will be changing things around tomorrow. Other than that, I’m floored at the attention my video has gotten, but I figured it would piss some people off. The video is serving it’s purpose, presenting my experience in a novel way, and that seems to be a lightning rod for controversy. Thanks for the attention all, come back again and maybe you’ll like my posts.
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01.30.07
Posted in Mac at 6:51 pm by Michael
My Macbook arrived back from Apple today. I’m disappointed to say that it is in the same condition as when I took it to the Apple Store. Broken. No repairs made, still the same parts from what I can tell. It doesn’t power on, and the battery is completely discharged. I’m a little depressed about the entire situation actually.
My impending move to Las Vegas is taking up most of my time right now. I’m going to collaborate with a friend of mine who works with video. Ralph Lopez and I have been friends for quite a while. He’s really good with video, and he’s also a Mac guy. Ralph thinks it will be fun and funny. We’re going to shoot the video on Thursday. I’m trying to line up a couple of cameras to get different angles of the destruction. I’m getting excited about going to Vegas, and I can’t let the loss of my laptop affect my mood right now. I’m going to get out all my anger and frustration at this situation with a good old sledging. The Macbook is useless to me in it’s current state, and I think it will be a smashing good time.
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01.29.07
Posted in Mac at 1:22 pm by Michael
Well, my macbook died last week. I woke up one morning and it just refused to boot at all. No startup chime, no fans, no sound at all. I took it to the Apple Store, and the Genius was quite efficient it creating a repair ticket and assuring me they’d ship it out and have it repaired. I checked the status of my repair today and it said “on hold - need information.” I called up Apple Care, and they slapped me with a repair bill over $700. Apparently, they are claiming that the reason my Mac stopped working is spill damage. I was completely floored about this. I didn’t spill anything on my Mac, it just stopped working. I asked for a supervisor, and was transferred to someone else. The supervisor refused to say anything other than “spill damage isn’t covered by the warranty.” I tried several times to explain that I didn’t spill anything on the mac, and that it just stopped working. She said something to the effect that the spill damage was a fact and that I was welcome to purchase another brand of laptop if I wasn’t happy with their policies.
Now, I loved my Mac very much. I tried to convert anyone and everyone who ever asked me about my mac. Now, though, I’m telling everyone not to buy a Mac, since they won’t warranty the product. To add insult to injury, a friend of mine who I was telling about this let me in on his story. He had a G4 tibook that he spilled and entire Dr. Pepper on. Apple happily replaced his entire laptop without even a question. How does that work? He actually spilled something on it, told them he did it, and they replaced it. I didn’t spill anything on mine, but they want over $700 to repair it because of “spill damage.”
If Apple doesn’t repair or replace my macbook, I will be making a video to put up on YouTube, and linking it to a post that details this incident. The video will be of me taking an 8 lb. sledgehammer to my useless macbook, and recommending anyone that wants a macbook to buy a cheaper pc laptop that can be replaced for less than the cost of a repair of a macbook. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product quite a bit, but if this is typical of Apple Care’s service, even if you buy the extended warranty, I don’t need it. I can buy 2 HP laptops for the price I spent for the single Macbook, and have a spare ready to go if and when my primary fails. I’d run linux on them for sure, since that’s as close as I’ll get to Mac OS X on a PC. I’m really rather disappointed and angry about this entire situation. Why did my friend get an entire new laptop, 2 years after he bought it, when he spilled soda on it, yet I can’t get a repair done for something that was beyond my control? I feel completely shafted right now, especially considering all the kind words I have given to Apple ever since I bought my Macbook.
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01.03.07
Posted in Mac at 12:58 am by Michael
There has been quite a bit of hype about Microsoft’s Vista being compared to Apple MacOS 10.4 Tiger. Having used both I can safely say that Apple is far ahead of Microsoft in virtually every area. Putting aside the insane systems requirements for Vista to run well, MacOS is still a much better experience. MacOS has it’s quirks, and there are a few things Apple could learn simply by listening to the users more and the designers less. A couple quick things, the 1 button mouse/trackpad. Don’t want to argue this one, but c’mon Apple, get into the 21st century, the number one complaint I see is this issue. Listen to the users already and quit being arrogant, I want 2 buttons, without having to buy another damn mouse. That’s it. Nothing fancy, no other special stuff, just what I can get on every other computer except yours. Also, fix the keys. The delete button not working the way I have come to expect on every other computer is almost but not quite a deal breaker. It requires me to pay more attention to a delete operation that I would like, but that’s not necessarily the worst thing when you’re a bit absent-minded… Enough with the personal rants, on to the reasons to switch.
- Vista is not proven in the wild.
That’s right. Vista is brand new and quite probably filled with thousands of bugs. Once it filters out to the real end users, and they get done kicking it around, there will be a large amount of “workarounds” that get found. This is classic Microsoft, release a barely tested product to end users, and then patch the hell out of it. I realize that almost all software gets revised and updated and patched, but truly Microsoft seems to have the worst track record for what I consider an “enterprise class” piece of software. Apple has a huge edge here since their OS has been out in the while for over a year now, and they’ve patched most of the worst flaws already. That means if you get a Mac, you are at least year ahead of anyone getting a new PC with Vista installed. When it comes to getting things done, being ahead of everyone else by such a large margin will pay of huge dividends quite quickly. I’m talking about productivity here, not money.
This is not surprising, it has been a benefit and feature of MacOS for a very long time. I can’t begin to explain the difference this one thing has on my productivity. When you plug a peripheral into your Mac, most of the time, it just works. With Windows, you never know if it will just work or whether you’ll have to spend valuable time getting it to work before you can use it. Not having to track down errors and drivers and such on a new peripheral saves huge amounts of time. While those Vista users are searching around madly for drivers and chasing down vague errors, you’ll be using your peripheral, happily getting things done. As a side benefit to users, this reduces stress in a big way. When things just work, you don’t get stressed out about it. When things don’t just work, you get stress, and you spend (too much) time getting to the point where you can use your peripheral, much less get your actual work done.
- Virtualization means you can run Windows apps on your Mac
Everyone that I’ve shown Parallels Desktop for Mac to has been very impressed. When I show them the coherency mode, and run Excel or Outlook on my mac desktop, I see a lot of smiles, and nods. This bodes well for the Mac’s future. One of the main things that stops people from switching is losing all their windows software. With Parallels they can use just about any Windows software they like and not worry about compatibility. You can easily drag and drop files between the Mac and Windows with Parallels, as well as just use a shared folder so the data is accessible to either OS. Being able to run Windows only apps on a Mac without having to reboot into Windows via BootCamp is simply the best mix of OSes I have seen to date.
- The Mac Laptops are Simply the Best You Can Get Right Now
The MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops are the best of the best. Stylish, user-friendly, high performance, and a highly portable. Apple now has the standard that other laptop manufacturers are going to be held to in the future. Owning my own Macbook, I can say without a doubt it has been the best laptop I have owned to date. The laptops I’ve had in the past from other manufacturer’s like Toshiba, Compaq, IBM, and HP pale in comparison to the experience I’ve had with my Macbook. The price is reasonable, and competitive to other similar laptops, with the added bonus of MacOS X. News reports abound of analysts claiming Apple’s market share is once again slowly climbing upwards after a long plateau, and I’m betting a growing number of those people will be buying laptops with the Apple logo on them.
Yeah, that’s right, I said it. They are sleek and stylish and look great. They are designed to not only perform well, but also to be pleasing to look at. I know many hardcore geeks will disagree with me, that form should follow function and the utter flexibility of the PC form factor appeals to a real geek more than some pretty little piece of plastic. I say they just haven’t had a computer that was useful and pleasant to the eyes. It is a small benefit to be sure, but I enjoy that my computer finally doesn’t have to be ugly to be a powerhouse. Apple pays at least as much attention to how the computer looks as they do to the performance of the machine, and I think it adds something to an Apple that I find severely lacking in virtually every other manufacturer out there. Apple products are simple and elegant in form as well as function.
And there you have it, 5 reasons to move to a Mac. Nothing too fancy or technical, just some good solid reasons to make the move to Mac now instead of later. Obviously this is all my opinion, but I’d argue it over a couple beers any day.
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12.29.06
Posted in Mac, Parallels Desktop at 5:41 pm by Michael
Parallels released a new version of their beta product today. After having just upgraded a few days ago, I was curious what had changed. On the surface I don’t notice much at all, but a couple small changes make a pretty big difference. When you go into Coherence Mode, windows with rounded corners no long “leak” a bit of the Windows desktop through on the overlay. This means the apps look even more integrated into the Mac desktop than they did before. Great work. Another small change I noticed is the inclusion of Transporter Beta3 into the mix. This tool allows you to virtualize a live PC into a virtual machine. This is a fairly large step for Parallels, and I like the results. I’m really starting to look forward to the final version of this software, and it continues to run admirably for my uses, even in beta.
VMware Fusion has been running for me well, but it has a lot of catching up to do if they want to compete with Parallels in the Mac market. It performs adequately, but it lacks several of the features that Parallels has caused me to come to expect in a Mac virtual environment. These features include Coherence mode and the ability to use a Boot Camp volume as the hdd in a virtual machine. Vmware Fusion looks promising, especially since the final version will be able to use virtually any virtual machine from other platforms. For now though, Parallels is far ahead in terms of usability and performance.
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12.26.06
Posted in Mac, Parallels Desktop at 11:05 pm by Michael
I know this is a little old but I finally got around to installing the new version of the Parallels Beta. It’s actually quite nifty. Coherence mode has been improved, and the ability to see windows apps from the dock has to be seen to be believed. You can hide almost every aspect of windows with the settings for coherence, it makes running windows apps very unobtrusive. They look like crap but it’s windows, what do you expect?
I tried out the USB 2.0 support and it works very well. I am able to plug my jumpdrive (formatted ntfs) and mount and copy files from it at the faster speeds in my Windows XP guest host. The update was flawless, although booting safemode in Parallels seems to be a trickier operation than in the VMware products, due to the flip animation it uses to switch from the configuration screen to the guest os console. There is a setting for this on the menu bar. Go to Parallels Desktop->Preferences and click the Animation tab. The setting there for OS Window transition allows you to disable this annoying animation and helps with that tricky F8 action to boot into safemode.
I’m very impressed with this software, for beta, it’s very well executed. I haven’t experienced any problems at all with either beta build, but the features in this new one are WELL worth the time and effort it takes to upgrade your current version. If you decide to upgrade be very sure you boot safemode in Windows and install the new version of Parallels Tools. You should do that on the first boot under the new version of the beta.
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12.22.06
Posted in VMware, Mac at 5:11 pm by Michael
With the release of the VMware Fusion Beta, I am in the process of evaluating it on my Macbook. So far as initial releases go, it’s interesting. I have installed and configured Ubuntu Linux onto a 5 gig virtual disk using Fusion. It’s comparable to Parallels Desktop, but this is obviously a beta. Things don’t look quite as nicely polished as they do on Paralells, but I expect by the time VMware releases Fusion most of that will be fixed. Performance seems good so far, though I’m not doing anything terribly demanding of the system. Just a simple LAMP setup to test things out. As a caveat anyone wanting to install the Ubuntu Server version will need to make an adjustment to grub’s config file. On the initial reboot after I installed Ubuntu Server, I got a kernel panic on an acpi component. I simply edited the grub config file at /boot/grub/menu.lst and added the “noacpi” kernel parameter to the line for my kernel. Once I did that it booted up successfully and no problems since.
Fusion seems to cause the fans on my Macbook to go into overdrive when compared to Parallels. It happens whenever I get any sort of load going on the Ubuntu server. I will have to create the same setup in parallels and test things. So far, running Windows XP, using Parallels, my Macbook’s fans don’t seem to run as much as they do once I have Ubuntu booted on Fusion. Running both at the same time keeps the fans on at the highest setting, pretty much non-stop. Obviously I’m putting a strain on the system, but you’d think it would alternate the fans a little… I only have 2 virtual machines going, and I was hoping to be able to run 4 at a time on a regular basis. The fans will be a bit of a let down, but I still love my Macbook.
I am going to change the blog around a bit, I want to get a custom design for the site, but with the holidays and work, I’m lucky to get time to post articles, much less change things around.
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